August 10, 2026
What a rent estimate is worth, and what it is not
An estimate is a claim about a house that is not on the market. Here is how ours is built, and the three ways it can be wrong.
Jessica Pool
August 10, 2026 · 1 min read
Every projection on this site stands on one number: what the house rents for. Get it wrong by $150 and the twenty-year model is fiction. So it is worth saying plainly how it is arrived at and where it breaks.
How it is built
Signed leases on comparable houses, within a tight radius, in the last few months, adjusted for bedrooms, bathrooms, square footage and condition. Signed, not asking — the two differ by more than most people expect in a soft market, and asking rents are the only ones published freely.
The three ways it goes wrong
Seasonality. A three-bedroom listed in November does not rent for what the same house gets in June. If the comparable leases all signed in one season, the estimate carries that season with it.
Condition drift. A comparable that rented well may have had a kitchen yours does not have. Photographs help; they do not settle it.
Thin comparables. In a street with few rentals, the estimate is standing on three leases rather than thirty, and three leases is an opinion.
What to do with it
Treat it as the middle of a range, not a figure. Then move it:
- Take $100 off and see whether the deal still holds. If it does not, the deal was standing on the estimate rather than on the house.
- Ask what the current tenant pays, if there is one. A lease in hand beats any model on this site.
- Ask a local manager what they would list it at on Monday. They are pricing against the same comparables and they have to live with the answer.
